{"id":8027,"date":"2019-01-22T15:06:31","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T22:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=8027"},"modified":"2019-01-22T15:06:31","modified_gmt":"2019-01-22T22:06:31","slug":"earthly-and-immediate-causes","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=8027","title":{"rendered":"Earthly and Immediate Causes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gwen Werner<\/strong><\/p>\n

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A phrase I heard a lot when I was a Christian, one that stuck to my skull, was, \u201cfind your identity in Christ,\u201d but what I wanted was an identity in anything concrete, something tangible to hang from, something to reckon with.<\/p>\n

Toward the beginning of high school, before I got diagnosed with Celiac\u2019s Disease, a doctor said I might be hypoglycemic. They took my blood, but before we got the results back, I had already told everyone I was hypoglycemic. I\u2019d eat spoonfuls of honey and pretend to fall asleep in front of boys and girls I had crushes on.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, a friend of mine said, \u201cYou\u2019ll always be my first girlfriend,\u201d and I held onto that with both hands. I started calling her my ex and it started to feel true.<\/p>\n

When I started dating my husband, I said things to him like, \u201cI have perfect pitch.\u201d I told him that one night when we were first dating and I was drunk and he was driving us to his parents\u2019 house in Southwest Wisconsin. Right before we hit a deer, he said, \u201cSing me an E.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then I said, \u201cI don\u2019t have perfect pitch, I just want you to like me.\u201d Then we hit a deer.<\/p>\n

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My parents\u2019 fundamentalist Christian church is a hands-at-your-sides congregation. The chapel isn\u2019t flashy because flashiness isn\u2019t godliness. There was a little uproar from the older folks when a guitar was brought in for worship, even though it wasn\u2019t to be used during the more meditative service. It is a sterile experience, driven by simple faith.<\/p>\n

I wanted grit and bile and broken teeth, but Christ was never on our cross.<\/p>\n

There is something about Catholicism that I\u2019ve always liked, though. I like the rituals and the relics, the Latin. I like the idea of eating and drinking God. I like that by some spookiness the bread and wine become literal skin and blood. I like the big choral numbers reverberating in high ceilings and the stained glass and the paintings of fat ladies and bearded dudes in skirts.<\/p>\n

At bible camp, where I first got saved, I felt like I was acting in a play. It felt good. I was finishing the first act and relishing in the ovation.<\/p>\n

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When I got kicked out of bible college the first time, it was for giving a guy a blowjob. He felt as though he had sinned, so he confessed to the administration and the administration included my mom. If I hadn\u2019t fit in with those Kid Christians before, I definitely didn\u2019t afterward.<\/p>\n

The next year, when I returned to bible college the second time, the other girls had been warned about me: the trouble-maker, the whore. Eventually I became the whore both on and off campus because finally I was being identified by something true, something I\u2019d done. The repressed Christian girl finding her sexuality is an easy part to play when she\u2019s you.<\/p>\n

Later, I\u2019d figure out that my identity could be found in anything I made or did with my two human hands. I could hang from the neck of anything, not just the neck of Christ\u2019s cross.<\/p>\n

I moved in with my boyfriend after I\u2019d known him for three months, without really asking him. I brought over my stuff a box at a time and he gave me a drawer so I took two and then half the closet and here we are.<\/p>\n

He and I did the kind of adjusting you do when you love someone. The daily changes people make when they want to scream at each other for leaving their shit everywhere, but somehow still find a way to bang a couple times a week. He would work all day and then come home and write for hours while I kicked the back of his chair until I decided to go get drunk at the bars.<\/p>\n

He used to tell me to \u201cbe sweet\u201d as I\u2019d leave the house, an \u201cI love you\u201d and a \u201cbe careful\u201d and a \u201cstay calm\u201d all rolled in one. He was patient and I was an asshole, because that was who I was trying to be at the time, because I sure as hell wasn\u2019t ready to scrub out laundry baskets or settle down.<\/p>\n

I was and am notorious for saying things like, \u201cI should get into gardening\u201d or \u201cWhat if I got really good at upholstering?\u201d and he always says, \u201cDo it.\u201d And I don\u2019t want to give him too much credit, but over the years he\u2019s given me the right amount of space and the right amount of handholding for me to be the kind of person who says yes to the things that make me better and no to the things that don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

He showed me what a real writing life looks like. He showed me writers like Amy Hempel and Rick Bass, bands like Polvo and the Drive-by Truckers, art worth holding in the air and spinning around for a while. Then he showed me with all that magnificence how to make room for me.<\/p>\n

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After I left the church, I took my mom out to lunch and told her, \u201cI am pursuing earthly and immediate causes. I\u2019m really happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while she wasn\u2019t altogether satisfied with that answer, still sincerely and kindheartedly concerned for the state of my eternal soul, I settled myself into the idea that this self was the self I\u2019d been crawling toward.<\/p>\n

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My esthetician friend talked to me about charismatic Christianity while ripping out my pubic hair last week. She casually asked about my writing, but this particular friend of mine is one of those earnestly interested people, remarkable at asking big questions, accepting any answer no matter how short or stupid, then moving on to the next big idea. She\u2019s one of those offhandedly bared people, the kind of person who will tell you they enjoy Fleetwood Mac and they dream of sorting out the foster care system and they don\u2019t enjoy wearing underwear, all in the same breath.<\/p>\n

I told her about my current project. I said the kind of idiot things you say when you\u2019re describing your art or your kid.<\/p>\n

She ripped out a section of hair and held it up to show me, laughed. \u201cThat was a good one!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess I don\u2019t really fucking know,\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m afraid of some of it. I don\u2019t want to make my mom cry,\u201d I finished.<\/p>\n

She laughed again and yanked out more hair, slapped her hand down where the wax had been and held it there. \u201cSo, where are you on God?\u201d<\/p>\n

We talked for a while and pretended we weren\u2019t both sort of thinking about my vagina. She said, \u201cI\u2019m way off the deep end. You know, I got baptized in the spirit last year and I speak in tongues and all that.\u201d<\/p>\n

We talked about her spiritual gifts and they sounded like magic to me. For the first time in years, talking about God didn\u2019t make me wince, because I get it. The invisible god just doesn\u2019t speak to me like the one carved from stone hanging in a great big cathedral or the YouTube videos of people falling on the ground, touched by something mystical, speaking in tongues, the art and performance of the big guy in charge.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s something living and breathing in something created, whether it lasts or not. Words hold history and future. They are holy. And the daily-ness of making them is like taking the sacrament. It\u2019s ritual enough for me. The writers and artists who came before me and all of us who scribble down our shit for all different reasons, choosing this sometimes lonely, slow, and thoughtful life, are my church and congregation and my body of Christ; each of us making art for the sake of art and identifying ourselves for the sake of identity.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have an \u201cidentity in Christ,\u201d but on my best days I have an identity in the only things about religion that ever made sense to me: verse, craft, community. The noise worth worshiping.<\/p>\n

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\u201cEarthly and Immediate Causes\u201d originally appeared in print in <\/em>I\u2019m Ruining My Own Life by Gwen Werner, a chapbook published by Passenger Side Books. You can get a copy at <\/em>http:\/\/passengersidebooks.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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Gwen Werner <\/strong>is doing fine, thanks for asking. She shares a\u00a0bachelor pad with\u00a0a mutt, a blind kitty, and a toothless kitty. You can find her here, if you give a good goddamn:\u00a0www.gwenwerner.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gwen Werner     A phrase I heard a lot when I was a Christian, one that stuck to my skull, was, \u201cfind your identity in Christ,\u201d but what I wanted was an identity in anything concrete, something tangible to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":8017,"menu_order":9,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8027","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P15duy-25t","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8041,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8027\/revisions\/8041"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}